Tuesday 16th June 2026
With 90 (NINETY) pubs to tick, Somerset was easily my most neglected county in this crazy quest to tick the Good Beer Guide in its entirety. For context, West Wales sits in second place with a mere 60 (SIXTY).
I'd ticked 12 pubs down here to date, but one of those is walkable from Bristol City's ground. The other 11 were all in Bath which if we're being honest, is Gloucestershire wrapped in a pink ribbon with farts that smell of strawberry.
So as I arrive in Taunton (home of the greatest cricket team on earth apart from Northants, am I right?) I felt like I was stepping into some seriously uncharted territory.
There was a changing of the pub mascot guard too as O.G. Colin (now a grey old man) hands the reins over to his son, Colin Jnr. One final pep talk pre-Taunton .....
My Air BnB lets me check in at 1pm without any extra charge. The first sign that it'd be a quality place. It did brilliantly for me all week. Quality recovery time is so vital when you're walking miles / drinking six pints daily / suffering heat exhaustion for nine days straight!
After a Tesco shop and 'quick wash n brush up' (as Bernard Everitt would say), I stride back in the direction of Taunton station. About 20 mins on foot.
Nice loaf mate! Ale House, Taunton (3479 / 6269) is the uneventful 'safe pair of hands' you want from your first pub of the holiday. Ease yourself in gently. 'Ale House' suits it perfectly. A bare boarded gaff full of wretched blokes of a certain age hunched over pints. A jar of pickled eggs sits untouched, and exciting flags are suspended from the ceiling. There's some mute background Sky Sports News whilst ABC's Poison Arrow plays. Excuse the local river pun, but I had to 'tone' down my smiling, which had made me conspicuous on arrival, causing me to wonder whether Mummy BRAPA's assessment of Somerset ("The least friendly county in the UK, so be careful luv") was going to be accurate. We'll keep an eye on that theory over the next nine blogs. The ale was Cornish and decent, Col Jnr looked a bit scared on his debut but resembling local head shapes, he was largely ignored .....
But not for long ......
Meanwhile, the temperature was creeping up past 25 degrees with a humidity not found in York. It can't get much hotter can it? ("It can" Mick McCarthy).
Pub two is my only Taunton 'double dotter' (3* beer on the CAMRA website + in the last five editions) so I had high hopes and the entrance door has a bit of vague style .....
.... but to my surprise (well, disappointment), posh foodie pretentions overrode the pubness. In fact, I am forced to nimbly side step the lass approaching me, bidding to thrust a clipboard menu into my chest. I battle my way to the bar where the staff seem a bit shocked when I start asking questions about the 5.5% local Brew Box ale. She asks if I want a half - heathen! Ring of Bells, Taunton (3480 / 6270) has a postage stamp sized appealing area containing green benches, but it has been commandeered by beardie locals. So I must sit in a food zone with a painfully vertical 5.5/10 carpet, but an excellent table top. Divine Ponytail sticks his head out of the kitchen and shouts "I see you've brought your own lunch, lolz!" Yep, Col Jnr had been spotted, and now all staff and customers are looking at him and I have to do a little show and tell. Nice people. Somerset 1-0 Mummy BRAPA. The ale's cracking too, so despite the pain points, I can grudgingly see why this so-called pub is highly rated.
The vultures were circling though, spotting signs of weakness in the young mascot and touting themselves like little Taunton window whores ....
The best place for a young cauliflower to hide out in these circumstances is 'Spoons.
Vast sweeping low-level scuzz bucket, stretching back for miles, Perkin Warbeck, Taunton (3481 / 6281) is EXACTLY the type of pub where you'd expect to encounter a lazy chancer claiming they're the rightful heir to the throne. Mainly to get out of doing an honest day's work. Aircraft hanger with an 8.5 carpet and downstairs loos. Giant Haystacks is a solid host, what a shame Big Daddy BRAPA wasn't here to witness his exemplary service. Is this Exeter IPA supposed to be murk on the scale of a garden pond? I'm not convinced. I'm not having much luck with Exeter ales recently. The loos are downstairs, the concave entrance door is mildly thrilling. An old lady with a tea cosy on her head and a billy goat beard whizzes around on her scooter, throwing defiant glares at anyone who catches her eye. Where will she stop, nobody knows.
But I wouldn't be satisfied with day one if I played in safe and stayed within the confines of Taunton.
After all, the two other ticks vaguely walkable from here didn't open until 6pm. And furthermore, I wanted to test the local taxi coverage for the week ahead. 'Taunton Taxis' App promised to be genuine challenger to Uber's dominance. So I set them both a little task, concurrently.
Both took their sweet arse time to answer my call, but Taunton Taxi's won out, and a chatty man (not Alan Carr) picks me up outside Primark next door cos 'Spoons ain't allowed for some reason.
Doesn't take long for my first dose of rural reality to set in, narrow country lanes with grass in the middle. Plus one Mummy BRAPA prediction which DID come to fruition "Almost EVERY road in Somerset, no matter how minor, will be chock-a-block with cars driving like maniacs, so take care luv".
With the accents ramped up to 11, there's a few startled looks and the odd "Oor arr, awroite mate?" when I arrive at Queens Arms, Pitminster (3482 / 6272). Truth is I'd got my red fleecy hoodie (why I was even wearing a fleece in this warmth, I don't know .... subconscious security blanket?) trapped in the door, and although I'm cursing my ineptitude, it had broken the ice. Not long past 4pm opening, there's plenty of drinkers in, pub entirely wet-led on a Tuesday, and the dominoes are already being cracked. A curious wizened landlady apologises for being 'out of puff', she's been cleaning like mad. The Otter Bright drinks very nicely, and although the pub has been too modernised / blanded out to be a BRAPA classic, it sets exactly the right tone. And asking for the Wifi code didn't make me conspicuous either. Good! Because my latest little challenge was to load up the Ordnance Survey App and try and get back to Taunton via two other pubs on foot.
Yep, leaving this seemingly sleepy one-horse village was a trial because cars were hooning up and down the narrow lanes forcing me into the hedgerows. Rush hour?
Thankfully, it soon becomes fields and farm tracks ....
And apart from one hairy moment where there's a warning sign due to a mean looking bull in field (OS App didn't tell me that, and yes I did remove my red fleece just in case it was a red rag to a bull!), it is plain sailing and I reach the village outskirts by 5:50pm so stop in a park for a snack and some water knowing the pub isn't quite open yet following its mid-afternoon closure.
The local church bongs 6, and although there's plenty of distant chatter emanating from the garden / corridor , absolutely no one inside to serve me at Winchester Arms, Trull (3483 / 6273), maybe they've all been taken by zombies? It takes a local Scotsman to appear on the scene and tell me to be patient because we have all the time in the world (speak for yourself Louis McArmstrong) There's no apology from the barmaid, who is actually quite flippant. Asks if I'm planning on going outside at all because if so she'll have to serve me in plastic(!) I say no, but clarify that if I decide to go outside later on, I'd have to return to the bar and ask her to decant my drink into plastic and she says yes! I'll stay in the stuffy but admittedly attractive indoors then. The ale is of the highest quality too (today's other 'double dotter' along with Ring of Bells so it made sense) but I'm feeling grumpy otherwise! Scottish dude's mate has arrived now so I can't chat to him. And to compound my misery, a weird bloke on BlueSky pisses me off having seen my comments re the drinking receptacle situation, replying to say he used to work in shithole Manchester city centre pubs back in the day and witnessed drunken glassings, and he can't believe a person of my pub experience would CONDONE people being glassed at pubs but it appears he was WRONG! The mental gymnastics required to achieve that leap actually needs admiring. Social media interactions eh? Totally fucked up.
Time for another long OS inspired walk to reach my final tick and walk off my frustrations. I set off chuntering to myself like a bugger, I tell thee!
Perhaps not quite as long a walk, but harder to navigate, out on the obscure eastern fringes of Taunton.
Finally, I think 'I must be somewhere near, but which direction from here?' turn my head to the left and by jove, it is only bloody right next to me .....
Wyvern Taunton Pub, Somerset (3484 / 6274) is surely club not pub despite the GBG's gaslighting, but a guide regular - and that's what we like to see! A chef with the face of Peter Crouch tells me off for climbing some forbidden steps and i realise my mood still isn't exactly 'chill' because I yelp 'WELL WHERE'S YER BAR THEN??' A sweaty lively family friendly hole of cricketing bent. The guest ale from Black Bear out at Wiveliscombe starts well but rapidly turns dodgy in the increasing heat. Speaking of which, I'm sweating buckets so I stand in front of a fan and groan to the amusement of a family gang so I apologise for any perceived weirdness and say I've had a long country walk and they are lovely to me after that, admiring Col Jnr. I find my mood improving although the club's own mascots are once again trying to nobble the young cauliflower. The second the family depart, I jump into their superior grave so I can watch the intro of France v Senegal. I'm invested in this one because Senegal are one of two sides I've drawn in the work sweepstake (the other being Croatia). A young barchap is having some downtime and an icy lemonade and comes over for a chinwag, and reckons France will win the whole thing. In my bid to find the bogs, a jokey bloke asks if he can borrow my phone! I hesitate and ask why. He says "good, I was just testing how security conscious you were". His wife says "behave!" and gives him a slap and I chuckle nervously. To save my poor feet further torture and so I don't miss too much of the game, Taunton Taxis again beat Uber in getting me back to my Air BnB.
Phew, well that was a tougher first day than I'd anticipated, but as I sit down for a weirdly cobbled together evening meal (optional pot pourri for roughage), I'm delighted to have achieved six ticks (three pretty rural) considering I'd only arrived today.
Much rest was needed as I intended to push myself even harder on the OS routes on day two.
Si
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